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Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
National
Alice Bazerghi

No surprise here: Chicago named the best city to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day

Stacey Peterson and Kevin McGuire take a selfie with the green Chicago River to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, Saturday, March 17th, 2018. | James Foster/For the Sun-Times

Between the pub crawls, parades and river dyeing, nobody does St. Patrick’s Day better than Chicago.

Though Boston, Philadelphia and New York have respectable celebrations, the Windy City came out on top of the best cities in the country to spend March 17, according to WalletHub.

To rank the festivities of 200 U.S. cities, WalletHub reviewed each one’s St. Patrick’s Day traditions, safety, accessibility, cost and weather. Things like Irish population size, parties and festivals per capita, cost of beer, crime rate and walkability were all taken into consideration.

Chicago, Philadelphia, Madison, Boston and Tampa were deemed the top five cities to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, WalletHub said.

With 55 percent of Americans planning on celebrating this year, WalletHub estimates that revelers will spend $5.6 billion on the holiday.

For those celebrating here, the Chicago River will be dyed green at 9 a.m. Saturday near Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive, and the parade will step off at noon at Balbo and Columbus drives.

The South Side Irish Parade gets underway at noon Sunday from 103rd Street and Western Avenue and will travel down Western to 115th Street.

Click to view slideshow.

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